Christmas tree ornament mobile

This year we decided to do something a little different with our tree and I created this Christmas tree mobile consisting of ornaments suspended on clear threads.

When I was shopping for ornaments to use found a lot on sale and went a little crazy. I decided it would be worth it to see how three different options would look. I did a variety of silver ornaments that came as a boxed set, green ornaments with three different textures and three sizes of clear glass ornaments that look a bit like bubbles.

Here is the mobile in context of our dining room (please forgive the mid-present wrapping clutter). We have room to put presents below it, and are still able to peek out the windows to see if the neighbor’s cat is visiting our front porch.

The view from below.

The ornaments are hung on regular ornament hooks attached to jewelry monofilament secured with crimp beads. I’ll put up details of how the mobile was created tomorrow. Instructions on how I made it are right over here.

what do you mean you are “not martha!” i beg to differ! this is so clever and beautiful! unfortunately it would be a huge tangled Christmas mess in our house with a 2 yo and a large dog! but i LOVE IT! the “bubbles” are so gorgeous!

And I have several color wheels from the 60’s that I used with my aluminum tree that would make this so cool….. I do not have room for a table tree in my front window, but I do have room for a ‘flat’ version of this in front of the window. And then with the color wheel!!!

This is amazing looking, and perfect for small apartment/condo dwellers. If we didn’t already have our artificial (watch the cat and dog try to eat both plastic and wood) tree up, I would definitely be trying this!

Thanks everybody! I’m so happy to know you like it. I wish I had a way to get pictures in front of a blank wall, I find the curtains distracting in the photos but the tree is more of a focus in real life.

What a great idea! My sister is moving into a small apartment while out of state for some training, and was lamenting her lack of space for a real tree. I’ll be sharing this as a lovely, clever solution!

I was set on creating something like this but I couldn’t figure out an attractive way to secure the filament to a frame or support system. Plus the popcorn ceilings at my place make these kind of hangings alarmingly unstable.

Just gorgeous, especially the silver version. Sadly, I can only imagine what my cat would do to this, and to herself, within minutes of seeing it. To her eyes, this would look like about a hundred cat toys all hung just for her to tangle.

amazing!
our family friend used to float her tree in the air. they had a outcove in the ceiling and they would hang the tree (no idea on how they watered it) and it was so magical and light. this is just like that!

This is genious! Elegant, simple, artistic, eco-friendly, clean and with an amazing WOW factor. The green shows up the most against the while background but I am intrigued by the mixed texture silver ornaments and the clear ones really DO look like bubbles. Thanks for sharing!

Love it! Last year, we were in Paris for Christmas, and Sonia Rykiel had ornaments hanging in the windows. The display was just fabulous—and yours is reminiscent of that window. I might even like yours more!

What a great idea! I love it! Thanks for tweeting about it. I found your tweet and came here. All three of them look great. If I can find cheap ornaments at after Christmas sales here in Jakarta, Indonesia, I will try to make one next year! Kaho

[…] which must have taken ages to put together. It reminds me a lot of a blog post I saw over at Not Martha where Megan created a Christmas tree ornament mobile. Looks pretty similar doesn’t it, well, […]

I ABSOLUTELY LOVE THIS!!! I saw a comercial of this on TV and have been looking for this for a while. This is the only site that I found this on. Not to mension this is a great space saver. Thanks for sharing!

[…] Here is something I came across last year and thought “COOL”. If I had more time, a modern house, and wouldn’t miss the glow that comes from the twinkly lights, I might attempt something like it. […]

The guy down at Encore was fantastic helping me find the rack. Had to go with a 14 3/4 instead of 17 3/4 because they were out. Made a few adjustments to the measurements and I think it turned out great! I would love to do a bigger one next year.

Eve – I don’t mean to sound like I’m bragging but I did my ornament mobile last year, and the C&B hanger you link to came out this year :) It is a good one though if you want something about the size of a chandelier. I think it also packs flat (something we need since we don’t have much storage space in our house).

I decided to make this for our Christmas tree this year. It took some scrambling, but I found the steamer rack at Creseto Restaurant Supply in Sacramento, and the mini-lanyard clips at Michael’s in the jewelry/bead department. I can’t believe how hard it was to locate those two items! I hope this helps others.

The tree I ‘m doing will have the angel planted on top of the steamer rack. I already spray painted the rack forest green, and will cover it with greenery, to surround the angel. I vaguely thought about painting it a soft white and using white quilt batting/Xmas tree batting to be a cloud for the angel to stand upon. So, who knows how this will turn out. I have a traditional house, so the modern/industrial look of all of the silvery metal does not work. So, I decided to decorate up the steamer rack . Someone might want to put a nativity there, a flameless candle, or something else.

I decided I am going to cover the chain with an ethereal shiny fabric, sewn in a loose folded tube over the chain.

I have no idea how this will look, but at least my husband and I will not be sneezing our way through the holiday season this year!

Have you seen the HOME DEPOT add? They have one of these trees hanging over the dining room table. I had to rewind the TV and show it off to my Husband who should have been named THOMAS because when I sent him this link, he doubted it would look good over the dining table!!!! HA!

This is one of the coolest ideas I’ve ever seen in the blogosphere. I don’t know if I’ll ever get it together to make one for Christmas, but I’m envisioning using this concept for science project DNA models. ;-)

I really love this, I tried it, worked on it for days.I finally gave up.It got 2 confusing,was hard 2 work with the monofiloment because it was hard 2 see.Wish I could of finished it. It is beautiful when som.somebody else does it.

We just finished this for our lab/office. We love it – thanks for the directions! We used a plastic gridded air filter support instead of a metal rack and had to add some support to get it to hang right. Definitely will go with the steamer rack next time. It is definitely easier if you can work with someone else. I can see modifying this for a DNA model.

i had the same idea to make a a christmas tree mobile, i started making a frame for it but it just wasn’t working so i googled “christmas tree mobile” and up came your blog! thank you for posting your great instructions! i made my tree, it looks so AWESOME! i love it!

tips to folks that are planning to make it: don’t cut and loop all your lines and leave them stacked on top of each other. i did this and all of my strings got so tangled, i couldn’t take them apart!! it really sucked. so then i decided to prep my rack, then cut, loop, hang on the rack with the ornament to weigh it down.

my only concern now is packing this up after the holidays. how do i keep the string from tangling?

Hi Megan!
I have to say, I am blown away by these Christmas Tree mobiles! They are STUNNING! I will so try to give this a go ext year! Thank you so much for sharing and for taking the time to give such fab instruction too! :)
Hoe your Christmas was wonderful !
Lizy x

I made the floating ornament xmas tree and would like to email a few pics to you! Thanks again for taking the time to publish the instructions. I hung it over my dining room table because we have 15 ft ceilings! It took 4 of us 6 hours to build and it’s about 5 feet long with 100 ornaments. I love it!

I love how they look like holograms. Can’t decide if I like the green or silver better. I may never have the patience to do this, but thanks for posting it.
Say hi to my daughter, Janet, when you see her. She lives in Seattle area also. (missing her from Michigan) LOL
Happy New Year. I look forward to seeing what you do next!

I’ve passed this link around so many times! A thought: if you don’t want to use ornament hooks, just take the cap and wire off the ornament, slip the monofilament loop over the wire, and then put them back on the ornament. A bit more fiddly, but sleeker. (This doesn’t do you any good if you’ve bought ornaments without the little wire, of course. :) )

I have been dreaming of this tree for two years. Well, this Saturday my two daughters show up with all the stuff to make it. Let me say, it turned out beautiful. It took 2 daughters, hubby and myself about 6 hours to make it. It is really cool. Now I need to figure out a way to store it, without taking it apart, because that is not happening. Anyone with ideas please let me know

I finished my tree this morning. I used pizza grid of diameter 45 cm made of aluminium, instead of steamer rack, which is hard to buy in Europe. I am amazed by this tutorial and I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for such a wonderful inspiration. Here is my tree:http://tinyurl.com/MyOrnamentTree

I love this idea, as I am looking for a way to replace the fake tree and do not want to kill a real one for just one month of enjoyment.
I don’t think this will work for us though. Our ornaments are not uniform and we cannot afford to replace most of them for this project. Also, I really miss the lights!

[…] and voila! A rustic homemade tree!With a little bit of time and patience, you can craft your own Christmas Tree Ornament Mobile with the help of Not Martha’s tutorial.Steering clear of red and green to better fit the style […]